


Dr. Nefirith Clarke, D.O.S.

by rainingechoes



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: Backstory, Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, Dungeons & Dragons Character Backstory, Gen, Original Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:34:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25237789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainingechoes/pseuds/rainingechoes
Summary: The origin of one doctor of the occult sciences, an Abyssal Tiefling Artificer (homebrew variant race found online).





	Dr. Nefirith Clarke, D.O.S.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my character for a homebrew-world campaign. She has black hair (usually tied back or braided), golden-yellow eyes, and a medium gray colored skin. Her horns are only a few inches long, nearly straight, but curves back slightly towards the tips. She's the tallest one in the party at 5'10". Her ancestry is tied back to an abyssal demon called the Nalfeshnee. That should be the basics... Well,
> 
> Enjoy!

Nefirith Clarke was born in Nonzala. Like her brother and her parents before them, she had no horns. They grew in as her skull bones fused together as she grew in those first few months of life. As an Abyssal Tiefling, descended from a long past ancestor who made a pact with a Nalfeshnee, she and others like her family would not grow the long and thick horns expected from other Tieflings. This made it difficult for them to fit in. Some of Nefirith's earliest memories only star her brother, for when their parents were away busy with work, he was the only one that would pay her any mind. 

One evening, they were playing in a common playground and Nefirith's brother told her to stay put as he went to use a restroom. In the few minutes that he was gone, a handful of other children of varying races took their chance to pounce. Nefirith was cornered, and as children tend to do, they bullied her. They told her that she had pathetic horns, that she may as well saw them off to try and pass as anything else. She was ugly for a Tiefling. Then they retorted that it would never work because of her sickly gray skin and sharp yellow eyes. Nefirith attempted to use Thaumaturgy to scare them away from her, but she hesitated and the stutter allowed the children to see right through it. They admonished her for her feeble attempts of magic. They seemed to be getting into their taunts when Nefirith's brother returned, and although he looked so similar to his little sister, the children were absolutely frightened of his use of Thaumaturgy and ran off. He smiled at her to let her know she was safe again, and Nefirith told him all the things they said to her. He did not let his smile fall as he told her that children are dumb and they find loners to pick on to pass the time or to make themselves feel better. His explanation seemed to calm her for the time being. 

A couple of years later, Nefirith was coming home from school early. She would do so from time to time when she felt like she would be learning nothing new for the rest of the day. She had easily frustrated teachers by how fast she learned concepts and how far ahead of the others she tended to stray. Her brother told her that her smarts would get her in trouble one day. He wasn't wrong. 

She entered their home shortly after lunchtime, but something was off. The air felt both sticky and humid while being cold and eerie. She knew her parents were both at work, so she went straight to her brother's room to see if he had any idea what was going on. 

All she remembers is the yellow of his eyes. 

The next thing she knew, she was being shaken awake by her mother, who had tears in her eyes. Her father was yelling, screaming, and throwing things around in the main living area. 

The next few years were tense, as Nefirith had to overcome her social anxieties alone. She grew even more enamored with science and knowledge during her moments of solitude. When everything else in her life was as unpredictably unknown as could be, there were always the certainties of facts and physics that reassured her. Whenever her hands weren't turning pages, they were creating small structures and gadgets. Being busy became her crutch because if she wasn't preoccupied with something, she would end up thinking about her brother. 

Nefirith knew that she couldn't talk to her parents about the night her brother disappeared. It brought up too many emotions. She had no friends to confide in. So she talked to herself. She would recollect out-loud about how she came home that day and tried to jog her memory by detailing everything she could. Sometimes she swore her parents heard her, but if they had, they showed no signs of doing so. It was sort of pointless though, as she'd always have to stop when she got to when she opened her brother's door. She had some gut feelings about it all, but she was never able to remember what happened. 

Once she was able to sell some of her gadgets and toys she was able to pay her way to a little Decantan college. The Mist and Tonics University. Her current goal in mind was that she wanted to make new technology, including something that might help her regain her lost memories. She spent most of her time in the library there. 

Then one night changed her entire world. 

Nefirit gathered her things at the end of a good study session at the library. She noticed that a group of dreary-looking students were hurriedly trying to leave without checking out their assorted books. One of them, carrying the most books, dropped one as they followed their companions out. Nefirith was able to scoop it up as she left just a moment later. In her room, she felt the same gut feeling that she felt when remembering her brother. Unfortunately, it was written in a language she didn't understand. Fortunately, she knew a wizard that stopped by the university sometimes that could help her out. 

She had a dream that her brother, in a ghostly apparition, followed her around and was cheering her on as she learned more about this book. When she woke up, she looked around to see if he was still there. She could hear him in her head, ever so slightly. It was kind of comforting. She kept having those dreams and it seemed like each morning, she could hear him more clearly. It began to spook her out when she sat down thinking and his voice rang out unbeckoned and unexpectedly. She didn't consciously think of the words he would say anymore. Nefirith thought at first that she was hearing voices, but she decided that it was more likely that she was getting ahead of herself, what with her constant dreams influencing her. But the dreams got darker, and the words came on their own more frequently. By the time she ran into her translator acquaintance, she could have complete conversations with the voice from her dreams. 

Beezlepie the wizard was able to cast some spells that allowed Nefirith to read the stolen library book she still kept hidden in her room. It was an introduction to other planes and the entities that lived in them. Compared to the similar books she had run into on her own, these ones were strange. It spoke of godlike beings that slept inside the planet until the day they awoke to end the world. It described deserts and remote islands where adventurers traveled in order to come across these beings of amazing power, usually trying to gain that power for themselves. It cited various references and sources should the reader want to learn more. Nefirith wanted that very much. 

More books, each harder to find than the last, led her to some artifacts that were associated with totems of power. She wanted to know how to use it, how to harness the power inside, and bottle it. She ended up falling into the hands of a cult, sworn to Ven'Jun, the Opulent Ancestor. She did not join this cult per se, but she stopped by somewhat frequently to pick their brains. She even stayed in a small home on the same western island, Decantus Sentina. Nefirith ended up getting to know a particular family kind of well, or at least the husband and wife. She had been invited to dinners where she met, for brief moments at a time, their daughter - if you could call it 'meeting'. It was more like spotting her peeking around the corner of the hallway for a few seconds before retreating back to wherever she had come from. Nefirith was a little over half the girl's age, but with elves living as long as they did, perhaps she really was older, comparatively.

Nefirith kept in contact with the cultists as she delved deeper into thieves guild contacts as well. They were quite helpful in locating and securing far away idols and totems that Nefirith could not procure herself. With their help and the cultists' knowledge, Nefirith felt closer than ever to her goals. 

One day, she came across an artifact that she was explicitly told not to uncover from its wrapping and container. She was too curious to obey. Upon the first sighting of the artifact, she was inundated with a hellish headache. She felt /something/ was staring through her soul from within it. It was the most frightened she had been in several years. She quickly covered it and delivered it without another word. For the rest of the night, she felt cold and could not warm herself. She nearly burned her own skin in her evening bath. After a dreamless sleep, she woke with a stinging headache. She asked "her brother" in her head what was causing it and a different voice answered her. She was shocked and alarmed, but according to her studies, it was not uncommon for those who danced with Eldritch artifacts to succumb to their curses and maladies. Now she had two voices besides her own in her brain. Great. But, if it could be used to her advantage, to find out what happened to her brother, how to get him back, and then continue on with her technomancy driven life, she welcomed it. 

[Then the extermination of the Ven'Jun cult happened, but it was not until Qeyearana came to her and told her about it that Nefirith knew. The Gord extremists of The Family religion had come to smite the cult and succeeded 99.9% of the way. Qeyearana seemed to be the only survivor. The 'young' elf needed to hide away, and the Gordian's would soon (if they had not already) know of her deep involvement and come for her as well. Even if Qeyearana did not completely trust her, they both knew they were each other's best bet to successfully flee and go into hiding. With few words spoken between them, they made their way to Decantus Primus.]


End file.
